Robin Torrence
Anthropology, Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.
E-mail: robint@austmus.gov.au
The theme looks at the nature of both archaeological practice and empirical results. First, archaeologists are concerned that the diversity of inquiry into human culture might be masked by a few dominant voices. Training, trans-national knowledge encounters, colonial legacies, the increasingly public face of the social sciences and the participation of non-social scientists in this knowledge process are all issues that we hope will be constructively debated by sessions in this theme. The theme is intended to be a forum for discussion of new research results, but we also expect that a comparative approach across the southern hemisphere will lead to new ideas relevant to scholars working in other areas of the world. The theme’s aims are thus:

• To examine the dynamics of how archaeological knowledge is exchanged. For example, must Africanists communicate with each other via Cambridge University Press?
• To exchange information and the nature of knowledge on the archaeology of the southern hemisphere.
• To blend archaeological and ‘indigenous voice’ concerns in post-colonial contexts.

Sessions

Stone Arrangements In The Southern Hemisphere

Organized By
Fiona Hook (Australia) and Bruce Veitch (Australia)

Session Details
Stone arrangements have remained a relatively understudied archaeological feature in the Southern Hemisphere. They occur in a very wide range of social settings and time periods. Until recently the literature on the archaeology of stone arrangements in this region has rarely gone beyond the descriptive. New studies of stone arrangements in the Southern Hemisphere include attempts to understand these features in terms of cultural landscapes defined in the broadest sense, comparisons with regional rock art studies, and the use of chronometric techniques such as optically stimulated luminescence to date their construction. This session is designed to explore the function and meanings of stone arrangements in the past and the present in the South and discuss how such studies differ from and inform those conducted in the North.

In social theory, peasants are considered to be important actors in economic, social and political terms. This is not always the case in archaeology; more akin to frame their studies under subsistence and/or technology and/or culture oriented categories (farmers, husbandry, agriculture, Neolithic/Formative, etc.). Even on those terms, it is frequently the case that productive activities of major contribution -other than agriculture- become regularly obscured. This session intends to gather and discuss diverse perspectives on the archaeology of peasants, from as diverse historical, social, geographical and cultural contexts as possible. Past peasant societies often resist the application of a whole set of concepts of supposedly universal validity, including domestication, complexity, intensification, etc. Is this lack a result of the application of northern anthropological/archaeological theories and methodologies? If not, why the reduction to those perspectives in southern archaeologies? Focusing on the small scale rural social groups that usually retain –at least partially- the control of their own reproduction within the group unit, can an exploration of such reluctant cases help to think alternative ideas? For example, can a perspective from the peasants themselves, as an alternative to a perspective on peasants from the state, be expanded? We get here through the present limitations of our constructions about the past, and we conjecture if the social and political resonances of the category ‘peasants’ in present third world countries are in some ways obscuring the study of peasants in pre-colonial contexts. Are there any political implications of such a theoretical re-framing for third-world archaeologies? Are there any such implications for peasants, as poor people in non industrial settings of poor countries? From third world’s archeological perspectives -that reserves only a part of the decisions for their academic production, reproduction and change- it becomes relevant to ask if the ongoing northern debate is useful for an understanding of past peasants. Is there any kind of relative archaeological ‘invisibility’ of peasants or is it in some ways related to the relative ‘invisibility’ of southern archaeologies in the theoretical and methodological debates? Or is it connected to the relative poverty of both peasants and third world conditions of academic knowledge of their past? In synthesis, not only the discussion on peasant archaeologies is welcome, but also how do the diverse cultural and social perceptions of society, time, nature, power and craft, permeate into theoretical and methodological categories used in the archaeology of peasants. Possible and partially explored dimensions of the problem are, for example: The role of gathering and hunting activities in peasants economies and its relation with herding, seeding and exchanging performances. Also, familiar-level interaction networks; relationships to land, water, and other resources. Modes of articulation, domination, resistance, struggle, or simple low profile surviving strategies, between peasants and broader social structures (chiefdoms, states, global economies). Other issues to be explored are everyday livelihoods and particular practices that enhance the reproduction of the group or, on the contrary, its failure; accepted and rejected, representations of peasant groups as selves or as others; relationships between peasants and issues of cultural heritage, and the roles of peasants in social and political changes. Also, ethnographically and document-based studies on peasants are welcome, as theoretical, methodological and historical perspectives of the archaeology of peasants.
Presentations
Ancient Peasant Labor In The Andes
Alejandra Korstanje (Instituto de Arqueología y Museo, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina) Conectando Espacios Construidos Y Utilizados En Sociedades Campesinas, A Partir De La Antigua Tecnologia Litica (En Amaicha Del Valle, Argentina)
Carolina Somonte (Instituto de Arqueología y Museo,Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina)
The Denial Of Peasant Agency
Alejandro F. Haber (Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina) Archaeology of Shifting Cultivation : the Case of Rajmahal Hills
Ajay Pratap
Crossing Cultural Borders In The Saharo-Sahelian Zone
Elena A.A. Garcea (Universita’ di Cassino, Laboratorio di Archeologia,Via Bari, 8, 03043 Cassino, FR, Italy) Prehispanic Societies at the North Eastern Ecuadorian Amazon Region
Maria Aguilera
Architectural Evidence Of Inca Occupation In The Provinces Of Oyon And Huaura
Roberto Aldo Noriega Guiterrez (Archaeologist, Wiesse Foundation, Av.Leonardo Arrieta 984, Lima 1 Peru) Inka Settlement in Lower Valley of Chillon
José Quinto Palacios
Archaeological Sites In Puchca Valley: Specialized Agricultural Production As A New Variant Of The Management Of Ecological Levels In The Northern Highlands Of Peru
Bebel Ibarra Asencios (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos) Indigenous Medical Practices Among Muria-Gonds of Bastar, Chhattisgarh, India: An Ethnographic Perspective
Arun Kumar (Dept. of Anthropology, Ravi Shankar Univ., Raipur, India)
The Inca Road Of Cajatambo
Joseph Bernabé Romero Archaeological cultures of the Assam Region
Dilip K. Medhi (Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam)
Chalcolithic Culture Of The Gangetic Plain With Special Reference To Recent Excavations At Agiabir, District In Mirzapur (Uttar Pradesh)
Ashok Kumar Singh (Department of AIHC & Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221 005, India) Archaeological Evidence from Anuradhapura
S. M. Haldhar
Landscapes Of Settlement In Ancient Pundranagara, Bangladesh
S S Mostafizur Rahman Pre-Hispanic settlements in the River Basin of Cachiyacu (Peruvian Amazon Area)
Santiago Rivas Panduro (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos)
Indigenous Communication Systems In The Western Grassfield Of Cameroon
Checkadam Kilem Forbah Traditional Farming Methods and Colonial Threats in the Bameda Grassfields of Cameroon: the Need for a Maintenance of Culture Policy
Fomuny am Sade Fonjweng (Department of History, PO Box 65, Buea, S.W. Province, Cameroon)
Session Time
Day Monday Date 23rd June
Time 9AM-1PM & 4-6PM Room McMahon 318

FORMAT:
Given the number of talks, the abstracts are grouped into four mini-sessions. These are numbered/denoted differently to avoid confusion.

The central theme to be investigated is whether models of agricultural development and diffusion based on Eurasian and MesoAmerican experiences are universally relevant. Multiple lines of evidence of early and potentially indigenous agriculture are being clarified in areas often considered to be peripheral, including parts of South and Central America, SubSaharan Africa, Indo-Malaysia, Melanesia and other areas. In this session, these lines of evidence are presented and compared against pervasive models of “agricultural origins” in order to widen existing discourses. A wide range of approaches to the definition of agriculture will be considered including alternative conceptions based on various spatial and temporal contexts.

Core Themes
• Creation of historically contingent and contextual conceptions of agriculture.
• Challenging existing (largely inherited Eurasian) models of agricultural ‘origins’.
• What is the value of using domestication as a measure of agricultural societies?
• Which agricultural signatures are most relevant?
• Discussing emerging lines of evidence from the tropics and Southern Hemisphere: archaeobotanical remains of former crop plants, palaeoecological records of clearance, signatures of an agricultural ‘packages’, archaeological evidence of former field systems and cultivated plots.

Transitions from Foraging to Farming in Southeast Asia: Inter-Disciplinary Insights from Niah Cave, Sarawak
Graeme Barker
Tubers and Palms and their Role in Rain Forest Occupation in Borneo
Huw Barton
Bananas in Prehistory: Perspectives from Papua New Guinea
Carol Lentfer
Prehistoric Plant Exploitation in New Guinea: Towards a Contingent Interpretation of Agriculture
Tim Denham
The Intensification Model as Applied to New Guinea Prehistory: a Re-Examination of Kuk Phases 4, 5 and 6
Tim Bayliss-Smith
The Concept of ‘Domestication’ in Pacific Prehistory
J. Peter White
‘Traditional’ or Spiritual-Driven as Opposed to ‘Modern’ or Rational-Driven Agricultural Systems on the Island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chili)
Geertrui Louwagie and Roger Langohr

Investigating the Dispersal of Cultigens into Southern South America
Jose Iriarte
Pre-Columbian Indigenous Migrations on South America Inferred by Genetic studies on Archaeological Crops Founded in Calcareous Shelters of Brazil.
Fábio de Oliveira Freitas
Chronicling Indigenous Accounts of the Rise of Agriculture
Matthew P. Sayre
An Exploration in Domesticating Prehistoric Andean Landscapes: The Case Study of Zea mays
John E. Staller
Tracing the Origin and Diffusion of Domesticated Maize Through Phytolith Assemblages Recovered from Food Residues
Robert G. Thompson
Re-Examining the “Typical” Pre-Hispanic Lowland South American Diet: a View from the Middle Orinoco
Linda Perry
Plant Domestication and Early Village Life in Mesoamerica and the Near East
Kevin O. Pope and Mary D. Pohl
Keepers of Louisiana’s Levees: Early Moundbuilders, Forest Managers, Fisher-Hunters, and Cultivators
Gayle J. Fritz
Archaeobotany, Native Agriculture, and Bridges Between Native and Non-Native People: Upstate New York and Beyond
Jack Rossen

Waxing crescents, non-centres and non-sense: The Local Scale of Agricultural Origins
Dorian Q. Fuller
Palaeo-ethnobotanical finds from excavations in south India with reference to protohistoric Watgal, Karnataka: initial farming practices and possible African crop connections with Deccan peninsula
Mukund D. Kajale
Pastoralism in Africa before Village Farming and States: Why Is Acceptance So Slow?
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
Human impact on the environment of two forested central African countries (Gabon and Cameroon) during the Holocene.
R. Oslisly and L. White
Agriculture in Rwanda during the Early Iron Age
Marie-Claude Van Grunderbeek and Emile Roche
Human Created Landscapes: The Archaeology of the Shashe-Limpopo River Basin, Northeastern Botswana
Sarah Dingalo and Alfred Tsheboeng
Holocene Land Use Patterns in Central Africa: a GIS approach
Dr Philippe Lavachery
Space and Activities Patterns. A proxy of social complexity?
L. Vrydaghs and V. Baeke